Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Kellia Ramares-Watson, a freelance journalist and editor in California,
is working towards a world without money. Most of us in this position seek
strategies for changing the ways we operate in our personal lives. Here's what
Kellia's going to experiment with this year in terms of give-and-take for her
editing services:

As for price, I am starting the New Year with a new philosophy, for me.
Our local Buddhist meditation center has operated for years on the principle of
Dana — or generous giving. Basically, it is sliding scale. Consider your own
personal financial situation, the length and complexity of the work to be
edited, what it might cost in your home country, and your own sense of decency
and fairness. Then come up with a figure.

One of the biggest problems with the capitalist pricing system is the
fact that it tries to etch in stone a fixed value for something that is, in
fact, of variable value, depending on the needs and desires of people who want
the thing. The fixed price then creates scarcity, blocking certain people who
need something from getting it.

While I am living in a money economy and need more of the stuff — hence
the pitch for work — I am also looking for a way to lessen money’s influence on
my life. For now, at least, the Buddhist Dana principle seems to be a good
answer.

Kellia also has some limitations on the kind of work she takes on (e.g.
no indexing) and the amount of work she can do at a time (e.g. no rush jobs) so
that work does not adversely impact her health, which is very sensitive to
stress. But Kellia is willing to hear what each person has to offer, and to consider
each project individually. You can email her:theendofmoney@gmail.com

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Radical Notes is a well-established on-line international forum for transformative politics with a special concern for South Asia. An in-depth interview with Anitra Nelson on non-market socialism and Life Without Money — conducted by Pratyush Chandra, who posed some insightful and intelligent questions — has just been posted on Radical Noteshere.

Some extracts follow:

We see non-market socialism as the only way to address the combined
crises we face, which are results of a capitalist system based in
production for trade, relying on monetary accounting and exchange. This
system contorts and confuses the values, relationships and structures
that ideally exist between people and between people and nature. At the
heart of the capitalist system is the practice and concept of money as a
measure, even a god. The structure and relations of capital are
impossible without the practice and concept of money as a general
all-purpose means of exchange and unit of account. Capital is money that
begets more money. Thus monetary values come to dominate social and
environmental values in more and more intensive and expansionary ways.
The modern state arises as a handmaiden to capital. We buy and we vote;
we are servants to both...

Money and markets represent capitalist power, not only a vernacular
of power, but also, and more importantly, existing material practice of
power. We must recover that power over the means of our existence, over
the conditions and practice of our existence. You cannot have capital
without money. You cannot have abstract labour or labour for wages
without money. Especially people who have no money understand that money
is not a neutral tool, it’s a form of control. Capitalists are defined
by money, their power is monetary power, their logic is a market-based
logic. If our strategies for confronting, undermining and overwhelming
capital are based in these simple facts, it is not hard to challenge the
system. Non-market socialism is pragmatic.

In as much as market socialists and social-democratic socialists
support market processes and mechanisms, I think that they share a basic
misunderstanding of monetary and market practices and how they
constitute capitalism. Twentieth century examples of centrally planned
and market-oriented socialism, best described as state capitalism,
clearly failed to democratise power and, in many ways their systems of
production and distribution mimicked capitalist work and consumption.
Socialist managers seemed to use market models as instruments of power
to control the masses much as we are contained in capitalism. For me,
socialism must mean sharing power, the power to decide what is produced,
how it is produced and for whom. Socialism must be state-free and
class-free because states and classes represent exclusive power...

In Life Without Money, we elaborate a local–global compact
society, not to lay down a hard and fast plan for a non-market socialist
future but to stimulate people’s imaginations and counter those who
regard it as impossible. Most significantly, for our activist practice,
we need to have a clear idea of where we are going and how our different
activities might ultimately constitute a socialist future. We want as
many people as possible elaborating ideas of a post-capitalist future so
we can argue, experiment and establish this society.

To distinguish ours, we needed to name it somehow. I liked the way
that the word ‘compact’ worked in two directions, socio-political and
the other environmental and material. The noun ‘compact’ refers to a
social agreement and, used as an adjective, ‘compact’ is associated with
efficiency and economy, referring to a condensed, small and efficient
use of space. The concept of a compact world is one of multiple
horizontal cells, which aim for relative collective sufficiency within
neighbourhoods and bioregions, connected by networks of various sizes
appropriate to their functions, with voluntarily created and agreed to
compacts structuring the production and flow of goods and services.
‘Collective sufficiency’ is a term we coined to refer to material,
basic-needs sufficiency evolving on the basis of a commons and people
working together to ensure their communal sufficiency (in contrast to
individuals or singular households developing ‘self-sufficiency’).

See — <http://radicalnotes.com/2012/12/30/non-market-socialism-life-without-money-an-interview-with-anitra-nelson/>